The EAT ME, DRINK ME Tour’s Set List
Well the European leg of the tour is already under way with the second performance this afternoon, which seems a bit odd as the album (or even the first single) isn’t in the stores yet!
I found that someone had posted the set list for the May 26th gig in Holland in the Manson USA fan forums. According to them the set list was:
If I Was Your Vampire
Disposable Teens
Irresponsible Hate Anthem
You And Me And The Devil Makes 3
Rock Is Dead
Putting Holes In Happiness
mOBSCENE
Sweet Dreams (are made of this)
Just A Car Crash Away
Great Big White World
Heart-Shaped Glasses (When The Heart Guides The Hand)
The Dope Show
Tainted Love
The Fight Song
The Beautiful People
I hate to say it, but what a disappointment! This looks like 2003’s set list but with new songs in place of the then new songs. I was hoping for Coma White or New Model and something off Holy Wood like Lamb of God or Valentine’s Day.
We can only hope that as the tour goes on the set list might get more adventurous!
In the mean time we can still ask out selves: How does it feel to be one of The Beautiful People?
Heart-Shaped Glasses Video
As posted by The Heirophant this morning.
Not for the bashful I think… I love the way the red tinsel curtain on stage becomes blood running down the walls in the bedroom scenes. Not to spoil the ending, but I was expecting a car crash - just not Thelma & Louise style, in retrospect the Polaroids were a dead give away. I guess this goes back to the idea about wanting to die with the person you love, which has featured pretty heavily in the publicity surrounding the album.
I’m looking forward to the 3D version (no kidding at all) - I just bet the 3D glasses are heart shaped!
Eat Me, Drink Me: The Darko Review
At least my death wish will come true…
I spent this bank holiday weekend with a bottle of absinthe and a copy of Marilyn Manson’s new album Eat Me, Drink Me. For those interested, and I know there are a few, here are my thoughts.
In 2006, with a ‘Best Of’ album in shops, a celebrity wedding and a film project in the works, it felt to many as if Marilyn Manson had unofficially retired from music… but a year later all that has changed, very literally. Eat Me, Drink Me is a collection of songs written about a year in his life that saw the break down of his marriage, frustration with film projects and less publicly dwelt on personal problems with his family. Needless to say, this is a very dark album about a very dark place.
It has also been described as his best and most accessible album to date. I was worried that ‘accessible’ was being used as a euphemism for ‘popy’ by some critics but having heard it, despite the softer music, I think its classical gothic themes of love, death, sex and cannibalism (not necessarily in that order) will set it apart from the resurgence of ‘rock bands’ in popular music.
In conclusion: I think that the esoteric Holy Wood remains Manson’s best work to date (my searching for hidden meanings may have told you that I would come to that conclusion) but never the less… this is pretty damn good and I’ll be in line on June 5th to buy my copy.
If I was your Vampire
The hole is where the heart is.
We built this tomb together
and I won’t fill it alone.Beyond the pale
everything is black.
No turning back.
The album opens with If I was your Vampire, which is the track I fell in love with a few weeks back when it first appeared on MySpace. Despite my reservations toward some of the material on the rest of the album, this song remains absolutely incredible. It’s dark romanticism seems to go far beyond even Ann Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. I doubt even the seductive Lestat, with all his theatricality and disturbing taste for Nun’s intimate blood, could write such a dark epic. This by far my favourite track on the album and I think it could easily stand on it’s own as a single. Absolutely incredible.
Putting Holes in Happiness
The gothic gloom of Vampirism lingers with a few sombre drum beats, before being chased away with a despairing guitar rift that sounds like it could have come from The Kinks’ suicide note: we’re Putting Holes in Happiness.
In interviews Manson has said that when working on the album he went back to the music he was listening to during the period of his life he was writing about, which I was surprised to hear included British acts like Radiohead and Bowie. I think this first half of album is where the British influence can be clearly heard in the guitars. Others have likened it to more recent bands like The Killers rather than clasics like The Kinks and Bowie, but I don’t agree - this may be a gentler Manson but he’s certainly not an insipid indie “rock and roll” star! I think it more likely that these bands draw their influence from the same place.
What did interest me about this song was it’s title. As I’ve already said on this site, the track shares its name with an entry in Manson’s online journal (dated 03/03/2003) and the first time I listened to it some of the lyrics sounded reminiscent of phrases from the same journal. Compare:
Blow out the candles
on all my Frankensteins.
At least my death wish will come true,
you taste like Valentine’s.
With this from the final entry (dated 30/03/2004):
… At least our
death wishes will come true.
We don’t even need to blow
out the candles. I hear that
thunder, I hear it too. It’s
all my goddamn Frankensteins
coming back for some sick closure…
The entry in question was announcing his ‘Best Of’ album and the Frankensteins were Manson’s songs - his own monstrous creations. So this would point the way for an interesting interpretation of how this track relates to Manson’s past… Which perhaps I will pursue at a later date! It’s also worth mentioning that this is the first time we hear car crashes being mentioned.
Red Carpet Grave
And she’s not just royal,
allegedly loyal.
Not unfaithful but
she has no faith in me.
It’s easy to imagine who this deceptively dark love song is about, but then perhaps ‘love song’ is a misleading description. It’s definitely a song about love but it’s not a love song by any stretch of the imagination. Musically it is very similar to Holes in Happiness but slightly gentler, it reminds me of the title track from The Golden Age of Grotesque. I think a lot of people are going to like this song, it’s chorus is very catchy and it has a subtle Manson swing beat to it.